Song of Susannah

Susa

Then, as at the end of their previous palaver in this place, the sky tore open, and the merlon behind them, and the very air between them. Through the rip, Susa

Then she fell back into the hybrid body with the white legs…only who knew how much of her previously brown skin was now white? She thought that situation, at least, was about to end, and she was delighted. She would gladly swap those white legs, strong though they might be, for a little peace of mind.

A little peacein her mind.

“She’s coming around,” someone growled. The one with the bulldog face, Susa

“Good deal.” That was Sayre, walking behind them. She looked around and saw that her entourage consisted of six low men, Hawkman, and a trio of vampires. The low men wore pistols in docker’s clutches…only she supposed that in this world you had to call them shoulder holsters. When in Rome, dear, do ya as the Romans do. Two of the vampires had bahs, the crossbow weapon of the Callas. The third was carrying a bitterly buzzing electric sword of the sort the Wolves had wielded.

Ten-to-one odds,Susa

Can you—Mia’s voice, from somewhere inside.

Shut up,Susa

Ahead, on the door they were approaching, she saw this:

It was familiar, and Susa

When they reached it, Sayre pushed past her on Hawkman’s side. He leaned toward the door and spoke something guttural deep in his throat, some alien word Susa

The door to the Arc 16 Experimental Station in Fedic came open. Susa

It’s where they operate on the children. Where they take from them whatever it is the Breakers need.

Now only one of the beds was occupied. Standing at its foot was a woman with one of those terrible rat’s heads. A nurse, perhaps. Beside her was a human—Susa

“Hurry!” he shouted. “Move your freight! We have to co

Sayre pushed her rudely through the door. She heard a humming deep in her head, and a brief jangle of todash chimes: She looked down but was too late; Mia’s borrowed legs were already gone and she went sprawling to the floor before Hawkman and Bulldog could come through behind her and catch her.

She braced on her elbows and looked up, aware that, for the first time in God knew how long—probably since she’d been raped in the circle of stones—she belonged only to herself. Mia was gone.

Then, as if to prove this wasn’t so, Susa

“Christ,” said one of Susa

“Pick her up, Haber!” Sayre snarled. “Jey! Grab hold! Get her off the floor, for your fathers’ sakes!”

Bulldog and Hawkman—or Haber and Jey, if you liked that better—grabbed her beneath the arms and quickly carried her down the aisle of the ward that way, past the rows of empty beds.

Mia turned toward Susa

“Well-met…and ill,” she managed.

“Push the next bed over!” the doctor shouted. “Hurry up, gods damn you! Why are you so Christingslow? ”

Two of the low men who’d accompanied Susa

The rathead nurse, meanwhile, was bending between her patient’s splayed legs and peering under the hiked-up hospital gown Mia now wore. She patted Mia’s right knee with a plump hand and made a mewling sound. It was almost surely meant to comfort, but Susa

“Don’t just stand there with your thumbs up your butts, you idiots!” the doctor cried. He was a stoutish man with brown eyes, flushed cheeks, and black hair swept back against his skull, where each track of the comb seemed as wide as a gutter. He wore a lab-coat of white nylon over a tweed suit. His scarlet cravat had an eye figured into it. This sigul did not surprise Susa

“We wait your word,” said Jey, the Hawkman. He spoke in a queer, inhuman monotone, as unpleasant as the rathead nurse’s mewl but perfectly understandable.

“You shouldn’tneed my word!” the doctor snapped. He flapped his hands in a Gallic gesture of disgust. “Didn’t your mothers have any children that lived?”

“I—” Haber began, but the doc went right over him. He was on a roll.

“How long have we been waiting for this, hmmm? How many times have we rehearsed the procedure? Why must you be so fuckingstupid, so Christingslow? Put her down on the b—”

Sayre moved with a speed Susa

The doc’s expression of petulant fury vanished in a heartbeat, and he began to scream in a childish, breaking treble. Spit spilled over his lower lip and the crotch of his tweed trousers darkened as his urine let go.

“Stop!”he howled.“I’m no good to you if you break my arm! Oh stop, that HURRRTS!”

“If I sh’d break your arm, Scowther, I’d just drag some other pill-pusher in off the street to finish this, and kill him later. Why not? It’s a woman having a baby, not brain-surgery, for Gan’s sake!”